Feeling. Exposed.

What do you think of when you hear the word “feelings”? What do you think of — or better yet, how do you feel — when you hear the word, “feelings”? Some might say love, or openness, honesty. Some might say wimpy; because feelings are for pussies. There’s also anger, discomfort, and tragedy. These are all feelings. Any of these work and anything else you might think of would work as well. To understand this is the first step towards understanding feelings, which contain two very important attributes that many of us don’t quite see, thereby preventing a lot of people from being comfortable with feelings.

The first one is what we just talked about, right? The endless amount of definitions or thoughts that pass through your head when considering the word “feelings”. There are as many responses to the word “feelings” as there are people in the world. Tony Robbins illustrates this pretty beautifully. He likes to talk about how nothing in the world or anything that happens in it has any value or meaning aside from what we choose to put on it. Our own narratives and experiences cause us to have unique interpretations of everything, which explains why people can have such wildly different viewpoints and so on and so forth. And he’s right.

The second quality of feelings is how temporary they are. Feelings are always fleeting and apt to change, which many of us over age 14 inherently know but conveniently choose to forget at times when sulking feels more enjoyable.

So this is a good start. We’re pretty well caught up already and maybe a few of you are even having a little chuckle to yourselves about how seriously you take your feelings sometimes. But the truth is that it’s not so silly for anyone to take feelings seriously. Though they’re both undefined and sporadic, make no mistake that those little shits run/destroy people’s lives and even run/destroy the world. How’s that possible, though? What’s the formula that causes these itty bitty feelings to take such a long and fateful leap?

Let’s go back to my man Tony for a second. The notion of nothing having any value or meaning aside from that which we choose to put on it applies not only to the idea of feelings but feelings themselves. In many cases, that which brings us the most pain, especially over time, is not a bad feeling, but feeling bad about bad feelings and creating a cycle of dissatisfaction. We attach our own mental commentary to feelings the same way we do anything else, and when it comes to unattractive feelings such as anxiety, despair, laziness, anger and so on, it’s easy to feel worse about them the more they stick around. It’s easy to try to force them out and disallow them in favor of something more cliché and forced liked positivity or confidence.

But Greg, wouldn’t that not matter since you also said that feelings are temporary? How would little spurts of bad feeling equate to forces powerful enough to shape lives and civilization as we know it? Good question, my friend. This is because feelings are brief by nature, but what we bring to them is in many ways unnatural. The stories we tell ourselves about the presence of our feelings and how appropriate they are, turn baby feelings into adult emotions. It’s kind of like in Spongebob when Mr. Krabs’ little calculator grew up into his precious cash register. Well, it’s sort of like that. Maybe I just have Spongebob on the brain. Anyway, I digress.

The more we repeat the labels we attach to feelings, the stronger they become, thus turning into personality traits over time. Once you’ve conditioned your brain enough to think of your feelings in one way, the more a part of you they become, and your knowledge of them being not serious and not here to stay starts to fade away. These personality traits that we have intact are major components when it comes to the decisions we make in regard to ourselves and in regard to the world.

The key then is reshaping the way we interpret our feelings. Note that I’ve used the word “interpret”, not “have”. As humans, we can and should expect to experience the whole spectrum of feelings at one point or another. We are never wrong in having any one of them. They all have their place and are all serving us in different ways. So no, trying to change our feelings is not the answer. Instead, step over the instinct to assess whether or not what’s happening is progressive. To make such a quick judgment of our feelings will inevitably result in us resorting to outdated, classical ideals like “this anxiety is getting in the way of my life” or “no one will like me if I keep being sad”; ideals that have caused bad feelings to turn into bad personality traits countless times already.

So try it. Don’t be afraid to say, “I’m feeling angry, and that’s ok”, “I’m feeling resentful, and that’s ok”, and “I’m feeling jealous, and that’s ok.” The more we identify our feelings for what they are — natural and temporary — the less control they will have and the less likely the quote-unquote negative ones will be apt to come up.